1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pharmaceutical mixture for hepatitis treatment and its preparation method, especially to a Boehmeria family plant for the treatment of hepatitis and preparation method of the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Chronic liver diseases (such as chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer) have remained significant medical problems. Liver diseases include viral liver disease, alcoholic liver disease, drug or toxicant liver disease, and metabolism disorder liver disease. It is estimated that worldwide there are about 350 million people who are chronic B type hepatitis carriers, and 2.7 million people who are chronic C type hepatitis carriers. In Taiwan, the B type hepatitis carrying rate is about 15 to 20%, and the C type hepatitis carrying rate is about 2 to 4%.
On one hand, the current medicines for treating hepatitis, such as liver protecting drugs, antiviral drugs or immune regulators, certainly have curative effects but on the other hand, they have side effects and are expensive. For example, interleukins and Lamivudine® (2′,3′-dideoxy-3′-thiacytidine) are used for treating B type hepatitis. The interleukins, which were approved by the U.S. FDA in 1992 for treating B type hepatitis, have only 20% positive response but patients experience severe side effects. Lamivudine® (2′,3′-dideoxy-3′-thiacytidine), which was approved by the FDA in 1998 for treating B type hepatitis, also has only a 17 to 33% positive response. Furthermore, Lamivudine® (2′,3′-dideoxy-3′-thiacytidine) will easily cause the mutation of B type hepatitis virus, and thus its potency is reduced.
In Chinese communities, hepatitis is usually treated with a traditional prescription, i.e. a herbal-type medicine. The potency of that medicine, however, is not so good and has low reproducibility (probably due to lack of precise process control). Hence, there are still some problems that need to be overcome in the treatment of hepatitis.
The present invention provides a composition for effective treatment of hepatitis and a novel process of the same. Liver protection can be achieved in those drug-based or other chemical (alcoholic liver disease) hepatitis cases as well as the chronic hepatitis patients.
Traditional Chinese medicines are usually extracted by water extraction, but this method cannot obtain enough active components. In addition, the active components will lose their activity at a high extraction temperature. Many processes in preparing pharmaceutical mixtures for hepatitis treatment have been disclosed. However, the prior arts use complex materials and traditional processes, which have not been able to solve the above problems.
Alternatively, a process that utilizes organic solvents, such as methanol, acetone, and chloroform, to extract the active components, has been disclosed. These organic solvents are toxic and need to be removed completely before a patient can be treated. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a novel pharmaceutical mixture for hepatitis treatment and its preparation method.
In the present invention, it is observed that Boehmeria family plant is effective for treating hepatitis. However, from the above description, the efficacy of traditional oral extract is limited. Moreover, in the industry, the toxic organic solvents are usually adopted in the extraction process and the active component may decay. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a novel preparation process and Boehmeria family plant for treating hepatitis, and the components of the product are more efficacious than traditional ones. There are more active substances and better curative effects, but no toxic organic solvents are used in the process so as to promote drug safety.